A Team of Trusted Advisors

Jean Whiddon contributed today's post. She is president and CEO of Fixation Marketing, a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications company based in Bethesda, MD.

Last week I met with a new primary care doctor. As I approached the desk of the new practice, I noticed a significant display of business cards: on the left, about 10 card holders for the primary care docs; on the right, a smaller cluster for the related specialists. Ah, I thought, one-stop shopping for integrated medical care.

I bring this up because the medical practice somewhat mirrors my vision for the marketing firm of five years from now. 

At the center is a core of hands-on creative strategists and designers, able to conceive, write and/or help execute the solid building blocks of an effective multimedia campaign—advertising, direct mail, email, websites, print and digital collateral. They’re agile, experienced and savvy (clients are in a hurry, so they need adept problem solvers). 

In our “one stop shop” for strategic campaigns, the extended team includes “specialist partners,” incorporating, but not limited, to a researcher, media planner, SEO/SMM/SEM pro, developer and focus group/meeting facilitator. All these subject matter masters may be independent, but are vetted, curated and managed by Fixation with complete transparency (and with as much direct contact as warranted between client and partner). It’s a model that’s heavy on custom collaboration and light on overhead, because that’s what works best.

What a far different model than the “all in-house” agency I joined nearly 25 years ago, but one driven by client needs and a changing marketplace. And really, it’s been evolving for a long time.

Series continues.

Personalization and Flexibility Will Define Agencies in the Future

Kevin Miller provided today's post. He is president and chief strategist of Frost Miller, a Bethesda, MD-based integrated marketing firm that provides a complete range of marcom services.

Five years from now our agency will pretty much look the same as today—smart folks sitting around eating donuts and creating results-driven marketing campaigns.

Broadly speaking, there are three overarching trends that will help shape how our agency works:

1. Strategy, planning and execution are becoming intertwined

2. Digital marketing is getting more personal

3. The more things change, the more they stay the same

It used to be that the only way to achieve a client’s marketing goals was to develop a strategy, put a plan together, and then execute that plan. That’s all changing. 

With real-time measurement of digital campaigns, tactics—and even strategies—can be changed immediately. Underperforming campaigns get replaced with ones that generate better results. But in order to improve performance, the people producing these campaigns will have to be strategic thinkers who can make changes on the fly.

An unfathomable amount of personal data about customers is allowing marketers to target very specific audiences. Targeting once achievable only through direct mail lists or Nielsen ratings—which only tracked the broadest audience characteristics—is now done through technologies that allow you to know exactly who, and where, your prospects are. Mobile, Facebook and Google lead the way, but this trend will reshape how we market in years ahead.

Telecommuting, virtual workspaces, and other trends that affect most types of businesses won’t have such a big impact on agencies. That’s because what makes a good agency great is collaboration—especially in an integrated marketing agency like ours. Sharing ideas among people with diverse individual skills leads to the development of fully integrated, and more successful, campaigns.

Series continues.

What Will Our Agency Look Like Five Years from Now?

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

What will we look like in five years?

We're going to be much more diverse.

Mirroring clients, more people with engineering, science and software backgrounds. A data scientist or two and even people with nutrition, life sciences and other technical training. 

Practically everyone will be coders. “Growth hacker,” a term emerging from Silicon Valley, will describe more of us.

More people who see themselves as marketing technologists.

More experiential specialists, as events, private and public, are only going to grow.

More B2B e-commerce experts (although we already have four), as this area will boom and bloom big time.

More B2B sales and marketing strategy experts. We’ve already taken some of this kind of work from McKinsey.

Probably a professional comedian or two to create “edutainment” to capture more attention and interest. Look at what Tim Washer has done for Cisco. Hiring journalists for content will be old hat.

More history majors. They just “get” the outside world better.

More senior women, although we’re not doing badly.

More African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Indians and Muslims. All to better mirror B2B buyers and clients.

Not just homegrown diversity. More people coming our way from exchange programs with the 30 members of WorldwideB2BPartners, our global B2B agency network.

For sure, no prima donnas, jerks or worse. Actually, we're already pretty good here by hiring team players and asking every new employee to read Choosing Civility.

As many dreamers and woolgatherers as we can find.

And, finally, a bunch more slackers. We just can’t get enough of ‘em!

Series continues.

B2B Agencies Lean into the Future

After buying The Washington Post in 2013, Jeff Bezos was asked whether he knew what trouble the company faced.

He said he was buying the publisher's people, who weren't to blame for the collapse of the newspaper industry.

"What we need to do is always lean into the future. When the world changes around you and when it changes against you—what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind—you have to lean into that and figure out what to do, because complaining isn't a strategy," Bezos said.

Like newspapers, B2B agencies face strong head winds.

Clients are better equipped than ever. They have DYI tools once found only within agencies.

And they're more self-assured. Confident the can come up with big ideas, they're quick to shoehorn agencies into tactical roles.

But smart B2B agency execs are leaning into the future.

Tomorrow begins a five-part series that shows how. Five B2B agency execs will answer the question, What will your agency look like five years from now?

The Wanderess

Without knowing why or how, I found myself in love with this strange Wanderess. Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me: a life of destiny and fate; as my own life up until we met had been so void of enchantment.

—Roman Payne, The Wanderess

My first crush was my second grade art teacher.

Her name is forgotten to me.

She dressed in black and wore berets.

She told us she commuted on Fridays to my elementary school by subway from Greenwich Village, where she lived. I knew artists and Beatniks harbored there, enjoying vastly Bohemian lives.

Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me, as my own seven-year life until we met had been so void of enchantment.

Remember your crush this Valentine's Day weekend.